MANKATO — The studies agree with each other and the engineers agree with the studies: Roundabouts save lives and time.

It’s harder to get the support of those for whom statistics aren’t enough. Like a trucking firm owner concerned that the roundabout would cause accidents. Or a nearby car dealership wondering how the roundabout will affect his access.

Elected officials, sometimes inundated with phone calls from constituents complaining about the roundabout proposal, can be another challenge.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation set up a Tuesday workshop specifically for the City Council and County Board, but the hardest questions came from further afield.

Sitting in the back row, Bruce Goodrich, owner of R & E Enterprises of Mankato, said the proposed two-line roundabout at Madison Avenue and Highway 22 puts passenger cars and his semis too close.

“Roundabouts, to me, are not made for trucks and cars (to be together),” he said. His drivers already take pains to avoid the region’s only roundabout, near New Prague.

Bryant Ficek, a consultant from the St. Paul firm TKDA, said the proposed roundabouts are designed with semis in mind. They include a so-called “apron” around the inner circle of the roundabout designed to support the wheels of a tractor trailer. That way, the cab can stay in the lane and the trailer can use some of the center island.

The meeting focused on two proposed roundabouts: One at Madison/22 and another at Adams Street and Highway 22. Together, they’d cost about $2 million and be built in 2013 or 2014.

MnDOT Traffic Engineer Scott Thompson said the biggest reason to change the intersections is safety.

Using 2032 traffic projections, a lighted intersection would see 2.9 accidents with injuries a year. The roundabout, a study showed, would see a single injury accident only every four or five years.

“Property damage crashes, that’s a different story,” Thompson said. The roundabout would have an estimated 11.3 annual crashes where the only damage is to a vehicle, compared to 5.8 for an intersection. That disparity, though, is seen as not near as important as the reduction in serious crashes.

The Adams/22 intersection is the most dangerous of state highways in MnDOT’s 13-county area. There have been 176 crashes there in the past 10 years, including two fatal accidents.

Other questions came from Snell Motors owner Todd Snell, who said he supports roundabouts, specifically if they would help out-of-town shoppers navigate the commercial district with ease.

He wanted to know what the plan was for Haefner Drive where it intersects with Adams Street just east of Highway 22. The plan might be another roundabout, but Ficek has yet to finish his report.

Snell said he recently built a car wash nearby, and it would have been nice to have been invited to this meeting (he heard about it by chance).

Commissioner Vance Stuehrenberg said he’s gotten a lot of phone calls from constituents, and perhaps 95 percent have been negative.

“I think it really, really scares some people and it scares me,” he said of the two-lane roundabouts.

After the meeting, though, he said he was happy about the deliberation, rather than a rush to build as many roundabouts as possible.

These two-lane roundabouts might get pushed back to 2014, though that will depend on whether they’re built together and on what side street modifications will be immediately necessary.

MnDOT is planning a campaign to educate drivers on how to drive a roundabout, of which three of the one-lane variety will likely be built in Mankato this summer: One at Stadium Road and Victory Drive and two more at the interchange of Highway 14 and County Road 12.